Ken Ono, a top mathematician and advisor at the University of Virginia, has helped uncover a striking new way to find prime numbers—those puzzling building blocks of arithmetic that have kept ...

Prime numbers are sometimes called math’s “atoms” because they can be divided by only themselves and 1. For two millennia, mathematicians have wondered if the prime numbers are truly random, or if ...

Prime numbers are only divisible by themselves and one. Robert Brook via Getty Images In the 17th century, French monk and mathematician Marin Mersenne developed a method to find prime numbers: values ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. It’s been nearly six years since math devotees discovered the last ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. If you want to solve a tricky problem, it often helps to get organized. You might, for example, break the problem into pieces and tackle ...

2. 3. 5. 7. 11. 13. 17. And so on. This is far from a comprehensive list of prime numbers—if we were to compile and write out an exhaustive list of all known prime numbers, this would be a truly ...